


Stripped Away

by Taste_of_Suburbia



Series: an unquiet mind [11]
Category: From Paris with Love (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Hunters, Anger, Blood Loss, Blood and Gore, Caring Wax, Case Fic, Communication Failure, Depression, Doppelganger, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Constipation, Exhaustion, Falling In Love, Family, Fear, Fever, Friendship, Heavy Angst, Hiding, Horror, Hunters & Hunting, Hurt Reece, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Insomnia, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Murder, On the Run, Panic Attacks, Paranoia, Paris Catacombs, Partners to Lovers, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prophetic Visions, Protective Wax, Romance, Seizures, Serial Killers, Serious Injuries, Suicide Attempt, Trope Bingo Round 13, Underground, Violence, h/c_bingo, protective reece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-12 02:28:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20556713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taste_of_Suburbia/pseuds/Taste_of_Suburbia
Summary: It was a miracle how Wax was managing to keep his head, an unfairness that only served to make Reece boil over and realize his only recourse: to go after this shape-shifter who was wearing his skin and kill him once and for all.Except, well, Reece didn’t knowexactlyhow he’d manage killing himself.





	Stripped Away

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [h/c_bingo](https://immolate-the-silence.dreamwidth.org/34933.html) for the prompt PTSD. Also written for [Trope Bingo](https://immolate-the-silence.dreamwidth.org/37096.html) for the prompt Secret Twin / Doppelganger. 
> 
> So I just watched Jonathan Rhys Meyers in Damascus Cover, which was surprisingly pretty enjoyable, and I just had to keep asking: I wonder where Wax is? Can you tell how much From Paris With Love and John and Jonathan have absolutely _ruined_ me? This [interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUF704V4s5c) says it all really. 
> 
> **Series:** an unquiet mind
> 
> **Soundtrack:** Tool’s ‘Fear Inoculum’. The title, however, comes from Ashes Divide’s song of the same name.

_~Enumerate all that I’m to do_

_Calculating steps away from you_

_My own mitosis_

_Growing through delusion from mania~_

* * *

It was Reece’s fault, or rather, much of it was.

That was the only conclusion to be drawn when you were accused of doing something that you didn’t  _yet _ do, only to find out that you indeed  _had_ , given your doppelganger had already done it  _for_ you. 

Granted, Reece and Wax had been after the clan of cannibalistic werewolves for months and had been laying the finishing touches on getting rid of them all in one fell swoop, or, as Wax liked to so delicately put it: slaughtering the motherfuckers in one glorious firebombing, because Wax got off on shooting and violence and fire and all those kinds of things. They hadn’t, however, exactly planned on having any witnesses, say, around two-hundred of them in broad daylight, during a high foot traffic part of the day.

Now, Reece’s face was not only seared into the minds of hundreds but also helpfully plastered all over TV screens and the front pages of newspapers.

At first, Reece was more emotionally upset than angry at being accused of burning innocent people to death. He supposed it was better than the world they fought everyday to keep underground being exposed to the public, that werewolves existed and ate people from time to time and that the world’s only salvation was people like Reece and Wax, who weren’t exactly the most mentally  _stable _ human beings on the planet, what with Reece’s visions making him go haywire occasionally. 

It was a damn miracle that Wax was managing to keep his head, an unfairness that only served to make Reece boil over and realize his only recourse: to go after this shape-shifter who was wearing his skin, who they later found out to be a doppelganger, and kill him once and for all.

Except, well, Reece didn’t know  _exactly _ how he’d manage killing himself.

* * *

Somewhere in between all the guilt and the rage and the complete and utter helplessness, there was still just that little bit left in Reece to conceive a way out.

All bets were off when someone was out there, walking around in your own skin, committing acts you’d intended but not in the  _way_ you had intended. Not to mention, committing acts that were too horrific to describe in detail, that he was  _forced _ to relive. 

Finding the bodies had been one thing, stumbling back against Wax only to find that the solid weight at his back was nothing at all compared to the weight of what had been done to  _truly _ innocent humans was quite another. He hadn’t looked back at Wax for fear of what he would find there, shame a poisonous heat creeping up the back of his neck and pooling in his belly, setting him alight with the horror of the situation he’d been thrust into. 

Maybe it would have been easier if Wax hadn’t been there. Maybe he wouldn’t have felt the need to switch off, to ignore his partner, to say such cruel things in an effort to mask his own suffering, to make it seem like all this had been planned out, that Reece knew  _exactly _ what the fuck he was doing, that he didn’t need Wax guiding him this way and that, didn’t need his pity or his plans or his pathetic attempts to talk Reece down from the ledge he was on, the ledge he had been put on, the ledge he was keeping himself on because he didn’t care, not one click, not anymore. 

It was the final straw, the breaking point, the moment where Reece could no longer crawl inside himself and yet still outwardly hold his head up and soldier on. He had to make himself numb, to everything and everyone around him, just to stay alive. Just to get this  _done_ . 

But before that… before that  _decision_ , he’d practically been bent down on his knees before the world, a laughable victim and the cold, unblemished steel clasped tightly in his palm the only tool he had to wield against that world. His only way out. 

Wax would just start shooting everything within sight.

But Reece wasn’t Wax.

He nearly choked at the weight of it on his tongue, the unfamiliarity and the cruelty. He nearly shot Wax for interfering, practically on his knees himself, begging for Reece to see reason that would only serve to break him in two again.

Reece wanted life on his own terms, not the doppelganger’s, not the world’s and  _certainly _ not Wax’s. 

These were his only terms.

Wax had talked him down, had said something that made Reece pause and pull back, rethinking where he was. It was only three seconds but Charlie Wax had worked with less.

At one moment, Reece had the gun and the next, he didn’t.

He lunged for it at one point - what Wax had  _stolen _ from him - only to be knocked flat on his back, ragged breaths getting sucked right out of him, causing him to cough and gulp in stale air. He still  _felt_ , all those emotions latched tightly inside a box of his own making, about to flood out and consume him. 

Wax was usually the trigger happy one, not cool, levelheaded Reece, not diplomatic, rational Reece.

If Wax wanted him to be  _that _ Reece, the only thing that would come of it would be pandemonium. 

Unfortunately, Wax had  _other _ plans. Forcing Reece to remain flat on his back, peering up through red-rimmed eyes at a partner he wanted nothing more to do with, at a sky that just as well could have fallen down on him, mercifully crushing the life right out of him in one swift rush, Wax was every bit pissed and every  _bit _ prepared to do something about it. Reece cowered easily under his piercing gaze and his hands that were more severe than secure as they pinned down Reece’s weight without any trickle of strength behind it. Holding Reece down was like nothing to Wax, depriving him of no strength, no force. 

It was  _infuriating. _

Reece had no chance, no outlet for his rage except tears, no legitimate effect of an impending fight save for Wax pressing against him harder and harder until everything would be forced to leech out of Reece, until there was nothing left to offer but absolute surrender.

It wasn’t fair for Wax to do this; it wasn’t just or sympathetic but it  _was _ Wax. 

Wrists throbbing from where his partner clutched them with an anger so characteristically  _Wax_ , with a purpose all too easily overshadowing Reece’s own, Reece tried to drift past the boundaries of his cruel reality, to disconnect himself so entirely that he would no longer be aware of what was happening. 

Until Wax’s hand cruelly wrapped around his hair and his head was inches away from being slammed down into rough blacktop.

And something rose up inside Reece then, some desperate, squirming  _need_ , something that could only  _betray _ him. 

“How do you know it’s me?” He all but squeaked, gasping, the only thing left that he could feel being Wax’s breath on his cheek and not that burn anymore, that burn he so needed to feel of Wax’s hand grasping his hair so tightly as if set to tear chunks out in one harsh motion.  _Pain_ , that was what would keep him tightly coiled, would stop him from shattering all over Wax. 

Wax’s hands dug into his wrists harder as if knowing Reece wanted to be abused,  _punished _ for all that had happened, for all that was  _still _ happening. 

Reece could feel the first glimmer of hysteria rising, a searing flame of fire through his chest and ascending until it was at the back of his throat and behind his eyes, until it would either release as a scream or a sob and neither would be welcome, unless Wax really wanted Reece to bend underneath him, and if Wax pressed hard enough then maybe… just maybe…

Reece could let go right here right now and never have to surface again.

It was almost past his lips now.

“You wanna know how I know you’re the real deal?” The fire settled somewhere just dangerously below, lying in wait. Reece swallowed and nodded at Wax’s furiously demanding question; he was deathly afraid that Wax would explain but needed him to anyway. “Because there’s no way the  _fake _ you would put me through all this bullshit.” 

It sounded a lot more complicated in that moment than Reece knew it was. It sounded like something with infinite meaning, something that just maybe Reece could hold onto to get him through all this.

Reece breathed out and the fire receded and so did Wax’s hands, a thumb running over one reddened wrist and a hand petting through his hair, just before a mouth settled over his fire and brimstone lips. It was every bit soft where Wax had only a moment ago been hard, every bit calming where he had once been demanding, and just as unfair as every one of Wax’s previous demands. Reece lay there boiling, oversensitive, curious and even seething, not bothering to kiss back, not bothering to shove away, not bothering to rise.

_All you have is Wax. Even when you don’t have your sanity, he’s _ always  _there. _

Somehow, Reece knew that it wouldn’t be enough.

* * *

Reece and Wax had been practically underground, off the radar, just barely hidden for three  _weeks_ until Reece had finally caught up with his doppelganger. It was smart enough not to run, to  _try _ to beg for its pitiless existence, to attempt to explain itself, listing all the ways it could potentially benefit Reece, and Reece was smart enough not to listen. 

His gun was conveniently out of bullets, given his half-hearted attempt on himself earlier in the week, so he’d turned to Wax and physically threatened him until he’d relented. He knew Wax hadn’t any objections to killing it, just like everything else they’d killed, and Reece had more reasons than usual this time, but the look in his partner’s eyes went far beyond shocked, straying dangerously into the realm of devastated, even heartbroken.

When Reece thought about it afterward, it was like Wax had thought that  _he _ was the doppelganger and not that  _thing_ , pleading for its life. Like Wax thought that something had been taken out of Reece and he was no longer that naive fool who over-thought everything before  _and _ after it happened, like he was no longer Reece even though he had every right to let rage overtake him, every right to kill, every right to take back his life. 

Then again, Wax had  _other _ things to be preoccupied about, namely the fourth occupant in the alleyway, dangled in front of them all by the doppelganger itself. The man watched Reece’s descent into madness with rapt fascination, filming it all with his handheld camera, head filling with all these preconceived notions that the new Reece didn’t give a damn about, that the old Reece would have spent so much time obsessing over, so much  _wasted_ time trying to convince him of his innocence. 

What did it really matter in the end? The damage had already been done. How much could he really change a person’s mind?

And yet, at the back of his mind, Reece knew he wasn’t like this: he didn’t threaten Wax and he didn’t say harsh, demeaning things to his own partner and he never acted as if he were alone, partner-less, friendless, without a care in the world.

He didn’t smile when he was about to kill something, even if that something had wronged him in every imaginable  _way. _

But at that moment, when the end had finally come within his grasp, it was like a light in him had been switched off: his humanity, his compassion, his rationality, his sense of action and consequence. In that moment there had been no  _after_ , there had only been the kill. Whatever happened after that would be fine, welcome even. 

What kind of person didn’t care, couldn’t find it in himself to care about anything, most of all himself?

Had he really been so broken?

The presence and escape of the man and his camera was unavoidable. Wax made a move to chase him down, barely made it one step before apparently changing his mind and Reece wished he would leave, so that he could do this himself with no interference and no irritating feelings trying to break past the dam he had constructed. Stubborn, pleading eyes were on him like they always were, always wanting something, always wanting him to wait until he got the go ahead.

And Reece couldn’t stand it anymore.

He still didn’t know why Wax had given it to him: a gun with enough bullets to kill his doppelganger five times over and he had. One bullet to the forehead, head thrown back, Reece moving step-by-step closer without any hesitation. He put another in a shoulder, a third through its (his) gaping mouth and another to the heart. Reece’s hands on his prey at  _last_ , he put a final round into its chest, blood spurting up like a fountain, showering Reece with vengeance enough. He let it fall without further interference, its descent to the ground too long and not long enough, for these were the only moments Reece knew what to do with. 

He was dead, so it made sense that he wouldn’t feel alive.

_Wouldn’t feel alive. _

_Wouldn’t… be alive._

* * *

There was blood enough on his collar, slithering down past his neck; coating his hands, dripping out from underneath his fingernails; and spitting out of his mouth, tongue throbbing in answer, for Reece to feel like he was drowning in it.

Wax stood four feet away, eyes wild, hands raised in a plea, every bit appearing as if Reece really was crazed. It was justified, considering his partner was the one he was pointing the gun at.

Reece didn’t know what had happened, only that he  _had _ gone crazy, insane with rage and frustration, with guilt and terror, from a depravity that wasn’t his own and a helplessness that was entirely. Two minutes ago, Wax hadn’t sympathized, hadn’t said the right thing and Reece had snapped, barking demands, screaming, imaginary hands pulling his head in every which direction and determined to bring him down to his knees. 

Only, Reece wasn’t bowing down before the pain and the fury and before this  _thing _ running around in his skin, his own  _skin_ , hell-bent to land he and Wax in a world of danger and inevitable hurt. 

It wasn’t there anymore but Wax still was, the only living thing there to bear the brunt of his anger, trying to talk Reece down with words he wasn’t hearing because he refused to. Maybe all this thing had done was set Reece loose, maybe all this… this  _madness_ had been bottled up inside Reece from day one, heightening with each case and with having to put up with all of Wax’s shit, tagging along behind him like a good little soldier, obeying the agency like a good little soldier, chasing after every vision like a good little…

But that  _was _ what this thing wanted, probably, to turn him against his own partner, to make him hate Wax. 

And Reece was no longer doing what he was told, not from that thing which he had just killed with his own hands and not from Wax.

He dropped the gun, put his head - about to crack open, vision fading at the edges - into his hands and collapsed.

* * *

“You should get out of those clothes,” Wax pressed, already tugging at his collar and Reece swatted his entirely too large hands away.

Something cool pressed against his forehead and Reece peered at it blearily; it was some type of can, probably one of Wax’s energy drinks. It was scary sometimes how Wax knew where he was in pain; his thumb was also currently working on a knot on the back of his neck, and Reece kinda didn’t want to push that particular hand away.

“You back down to the ground again, cowboy?” Wax cracked a smile and Reece knew he was meant to give one in return, anything to banish the wary look in his partner’s eyes.

But Reece was tired of reassuring Wax when he couldn’t even reassure himself.

So instead he swallowed, tucked his head into the crook of his arm and unsteadily breathed.

* * *

Wax plopped down on the seat opposite him with a huff. “ _Both _ our faces are plastered all over the papers. Goddammit!” 

Reece flinched slightly at his partner’s raised voice, though it was a marked improvement over how jumpy he had been the last few weeks. Not that he felt any calmer; no, his insides were still roiling as if he was locked tightly into some roller-coaster bound to repeat an endless, death-defying loop.

Wax dropped Reece’s coffee - latte, specifically - with an unusual lack of disgust onto the table, reaching over to grab Reece’s paper before he had finished it. Reece let him have it without protest, realizing he didn’t much want to look anymore at the bloodstained clothes he had been wearing that night, clothes he’d only just burned in a dumpster a handful of hours ago. He shuddered, picking at the holes of the plastic, cheesy red and white checkered tablecloth, sipping his mocha latte tentatively as if fearing it would rise up and scald his throat.

In their line of work, it seemed a legitimate concern.

Wax peered up at him now and then, each time harder and more insistent. Not that Reece was looking at him, just that he could sense his partner’s weighted, determined gaze. Reece was half-fearful Wax was going to ask him if he was good for the hundredth or so time since this whole gruesome debacle, but instead Wax chucked his perfectly good coffee into the nearest waste bin, hunched over closer toward Reece and sighed. “Think we’re gonna have to go deeper underground for a while. Not really feeling up to dealing with a witch-hunt at this delicate point of my life.”

Reece would have snorted if he was feeling any ounce self-assured. “We’re not in the fourteenth century, Wax.”

“No,” Wax admitted. “But we’ve got guns now. Gun-wielding maniacs and terrorists and enough stupidity too to make up for all that past ignorance.”

Wax did, after all, have a point.

Not that it mattered much anyway, considering the agency’s suspicious silence meant only one thing: they’d be having legitimately dangerous and  _skilled _ assassins on their tail soon enough. 

Reece only wondered if they could go deep enough to outrun them.

* * *

If Wax had triggered a vision before, Reece hadn’t realized it.

Yet now, every time Reece dared to close his eyes there were claws digging through piles and piles of dirt - mountains of it - and trying to grab hold of him. For every inch Reece pushed back he seemed to move an inch closer, for every bit of reassurance he poured into the mantra that none of it was real, he could only remind himself that soon it would be.

He always woke before the claws touched his skin, but only  _just _ before.

* * *

There were, of course, things to hunt underground.

Leave it to Wax to find something and set himself and Reece on its trail, as if Reece wasn’t out of sorts enough after days of driving himself crazy  _trying _ to sleep in filthy, vacant alleyways, waiting for Wax to come back with their meager stolen food while all the while Reece was focusing too heavily on dead eyes that were all his own and yet not, staring back at him in judgment and betrayal and Reece unable to stop shivering and to shake the goosebumps off his skin, unable to stop chewing his fingernails down to bloody bits of skin, unable to breathe in sometimes without seeing it just a foot away, catching the breath in his throat, hands there choking him,  _his _ hands until they became Wax’s and that was even worse, worse because Wax wouldn’t let him go no matter how hard he begged, wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t cave, until Reece’s eyes rolled up and belonged to the dead thing, the now dead  _him,_ until his body lay prone and shriveled up and belonged six feet under the earth, screaming out for decades more that he really was Reece. 

_How do you know it’s me? _

_There’s no way the _ fake _ you would put me through all this bullshit._

_I _ know  _you, Reece. _

Wax found him like this more than once, muttering and senseless and just on the verge of not breathing. Sometimes he’d slap Reece or cup his jaw and breathe little puffs of air into his mouth, or he’d shake him until Reece really was certain he couldn’t move, or he’d pound on his chest until Reece sucked in lungfuls of air enough so that he wished he’d never started breathing again, courtesy of an unwelcome sensation crushing his chest and squeezing his lungs and tricking his eyes into seeing things that weren’t there.

And sometimes Reece was just fine, not a victim of memory nor of deception.

Sometimes he’d just sit on the cold concrete, heavy head resting on skinned knees, and stare at the wall and try to remember far  _far _ back: before Wax, before the agency, before he knew about the things out there that were more monster than human, as much as he may have wanted them to be the other way around. Only… he had  _always _ known about that deep underbelly of the earth that sent out its darkness to stalk and mutilate humans. He couldn’t remember a time before the visions, couldn’t even remember a time before he’d known  _what _ they were. 

They had become such a part of his life, such a part of  _him _ that he was indistinguishable from them. 

He was nothing, served no purpose without them.

Take away the visions and he was just a senseless killer, just like the other him.

There must have been a point where he’d struggled with this, early on, but that he couldn’t recall either. He’d always been okay with it, or okay in the sense that he didn’t have time to  _not _ be okay, not with his young aspirations and his eagerness to sate the agency, which was completely legitimate given how far-reaching their claws extended. 

And then Charlie Wax had swung into his life without a care in the world. He rolled with the fucked up parts of Reece’s visions as if it was all nothing, nothing to freak out about or go running to the hills for, nothing to convince him to take on a considerably less complicated partner.

Face it, it had to run deeper than just loyalty, right?

It didn’t matter. No matter what Reece did or didn’t say, did or didn’t do, Wax was always there.

Always there with ideas to dull Reece’s head full of knives.

So when Wax came back one night with just a mere handful of food, Reece dozing with his eyes open which really shouldn’t have been a thing but somehow had become one, and if Reece had a computer he’d google how to induce sleep or how many days one could function without sleep, but he didn’t have one so instead he refused the food offered to him, he had no choice but to listen to Wax’s crackpot idea beginning with the dreaded: “So, I’ve found us something to hunt, Reece cup.”

Because Reece’s lack of visions - nothing short of a miracle - couldn’t spare him.

Though as long as Reece didn’t have to get up for the next five hours or so, he figured he should be just fine.

* * *

Reece had heard about the Parisian catacombs before, but he’d never actually done any hard research on them. It was something that more terrified him than interested him; then again, most of what he was forced to research fell under that specification. But at least the creatures he hunted were things you could actually  _shoot_ at.  _Willingly _ going underground into areas little explored by humans, when any number of things could go wrong wasn’t exactly his cup of tea, even if they were on a case. 

When Wax had said they needed to go deeper underground, he didn’t think his partner had meant  _literally. _

Of course, his anxiety about their present and future circumstances had to rear its ugly head around Wax, who was just as liable to make fun of him as he was at playing this all off like it was nothing. “I thought there were supposed to be guides for this sort of thing?”

Wax snorted. “If you want the agency to catch up with us, fine. Let’s  _gooo_ get us a guide.” 

Reece bristled at Wax’s mocking tone, stubbornly remaining where he was no matter how far Wax moved ahead of him. He didn’t think he should be so cavalier about their lives and said as much. “People _die _down here, Wax.” Of course, that was entirely an assumption, albeit a likely one. He shivered at the chill he felt even now and he hadn’t even moved past the entrance yet. He’d read briefly about the catacombs and could easily concoct his own horror stories: people getting trapped or not able to find their way out and running out of oxygen or food, or cave ins which led to drownings when no one had had any idea there was water down there in the first place. “They get lost or run out of air or…”

As far as he knew, Wax wasn’t a cataphile; in fact, he  _knew _ he wasn’t. 

“Easy. You honestly think I’m gonna let anything happen to us? Since when haven’t I been prepared for anything that hits us?”  _Most of the time_ , Reece thought.  _Most of the time you just wing it. _ “Besides, we gotta fly sooo under the radar, baby, and this is our best option.”

Reece, however, was still upset and pissed and his nerves felt like they were being dunked repeatedly into icy water. “I wish you wouldn’t call me that.”

Wax paused. He glanced back at Reece and then turned away again quickly as if he were closing a door between them. Reece swallowed down the knives in his throat, the silence thickening so much it almost became poisonous. He didn’t know what had possessed him to say something so stupid and careless and  _selfish_ . He had long since given up on telling Wax when he did something that annoyed him, not because he was no longer annoyed but because he had long since realized it was better  _not _ to try to steer Wax in a certain direction. 

He supposed he was just feeling… bitter, in a sense.

Problem was, he should be feeling anything  _but _ bitter toward Wax. His partner had done nothing wrong. Sure, he could rub Reece the wrong way sometimes, a  _lot _ of the time, but Reece felt nothing but immediate shame the moment the words left his mouth and it wouldn’t be going away anytime soon. 

Should he backtrack, say he was sorry? Or would that make it even worse?

“You comin’ down with me or are you just gonna stand there?”

Reece couldn’t. There was a part of him so terrified that he couldn’t even move. Something in him was screaming  _no!, stay out, you’ll regret it. _ The other part was a self-pity party:  _haven’t I been through enough? Why do I always have to put myself into these situations? Why can’t the world just… let up? _ And yet that last  _niggling _ part weighed out stronger than the rest if not for his traitorous body:  _you have no choice. Don’t let Wax get captured or killed because _ you  _can’t do what needs to be done. _

Yet before Reece could force every muscle into obeisance, in  _duty,_ to his partner, the latter amazingly retreated. Reece fell down onto the hard-packed dirt, hand splayed over his chest, breathing shallowly. Wax, a man of infinite impatience, knelt down beside him and was just  _there_ , not yanking Reece up, not speaking, not touching him, just  _there. _ The bulk of him was enough to push what lay beneath them further back, enough so that Reece could pretend there was nothing behind his partner, that his fear had no basis, that they were just sitting in no particular place and doing no particular thing. 

Wax had that effect on him, better than a glass of wine to soothe his nerves.

He wondered how many times Wax wanted a hit of cocaine every time Reece put him through something like this. He wondered if he especially wanted one now, exactly when they couldn’t risk it and he wondered if that pissed Wax off all the more, that this all was Reece’s fault in some way.

The shame rose inside him like bile until he realized that Wax was still there, like a boulder, unmovable. His breathing eased up a bit.

“This is the only way I know to protect you.”

Reece froze, eyes curiously seeking out Wax’s without moving an inch. Had he just heard that right?

Wax, however, wasn’t looking at him, head tilted down as if surveying the dirt, and Reece got the good long look at him he so desired and entirely couldn’t help. It wasn’t the first time he wanted to wrap himself up in Wax’s arms, where the world wouldn’t dare to touch him.

_What about you? _ He wanted to ask, wanted to  _scream _ until the whole world could hear it and tear him apart.  _Who’s going to protect you? Is there nothing I can do that would make you leave me? _ The thoughts went unspoken and therefore unheard, like so many of Reece’s thoughts lately. 

It wasn’t the first time he  _wanted _ Wax, beyond sense or reason, far past the boundaries of intelligence. 

He licked his lips, fear coiled in his chest like a sharp, tightly packed bundle of knives, every breath he took beckoning his vital organs too close to getting punctured.

Without a word or even a glance, Wax’s hand splayed out over his own.

_You have Wax. That should be enough to stave off any fear. _

The blades in his chest dulled considerably and then evaporated entirely. Reece sat there, stubbornly staring at a blood stain on Wax’s jeans, trying again not to think about where they were. “I’m sorry about before, Wax.”  _I’m just tired, I’m just so fucking exhausted I can barely think. I’m just stupid. _

“Of course you are, honeybug.” Wax’s hand cupped Reece’s cheek, gently directing his gaze upward, allowing Reece to confirm where he suspected Wax’s heart had been all along and  _still was_ . “Maybe I’ll ease up a notch or two, huh? Give ya some space?” 

Physically or…?

Reece took in his partner’s hungry gaze and his heart started thundering in his chest. Wax had always been up in his space since day one, words and touch first grating but then comfortingly familiar; however, Reece had never imagined that it might have been deliberate. Even if he had, he never imagined it would be deliberate in the way that Wax  _desired _ him, that he didn’t just want to irritate Reece at every available opportunity. 

Even when Wax had pinned him down, telling Reece beyond a shadow of a doubt that he  _knew _ who Reece was, mouth like a blade peeling Reece open and exposing him like nothing else could, even then Reece still couldn’t believe that it wasn’t just a hit for Wax and a way to pull Reece back to him all in one swift stroke, meaningless beyond that. 

Then again, Reece could be reading too much into this whole situation…

Wax’s hand moved around to the back of Reece’s neck and their mouths connected before any coherent thought could cross his brain, or any doubt for that matter either.

The kiss was slow but ravenous all the same, Wax taking his time and enjoying the moment for all that Reece could tell, exploring every inch of his mouth as if eager for every part of Reece he could get his hands on. Wax smelled  _good _ this close, close enough for Reece to devour him too, to consume Wax with more than just his gaze, to pour forth every bit of feeling without feeling any ounce of shame about it. 

It was like this light was raining down upon them, soaking them in happiness and desire and  _lust. _

Reece was still tingling fifteen minutes later when the entrance was far past their aching feet.

* * *

These tunnels were just like the ones in Reece’s dreams: long and winding and dark, their footsteps echoing too loudly in the small spaces they pushed into, barely able to walk side-by-side.

Reece nervously fingered the knife in his back pocket, nearly colliding into Wax in his distraction. A hand pushed him back the way they had come. “We’re not going that way.”

“Why…?” Without thinking, Reece slipped into the space Wax had only just vacated, immediately pushing himself back in an understandable panic as five sets of lifeless eyes peered out at him, one arm spread out too close to Reece as if beckoning him to enter.

It wasn’t the best moment to tell Wax ‘I told you so,’ so he didn’t.

But he  _did _ think it. 

Until a vision later showed him the missing chunks and limbs from the bodies and how it revealed that it was no mere cave in or drowning that had killed them; Wax was right in that way. He had found a case, judging from the teeth marks and the ravaged flesh gouged by claws and those faces frozen in their last moment of terror.

Every moment Reece closed his eyes he was going down that same tunnel, about to step into that same dark space, scrambling back at what his eyes took in nearly too late.

And every moment Reece closed his eyes that arm moved closer, the fingers curling ominously.

* * *

Trouble always seemed to find them before they could prepare well enough for it.

The human-sized mole-like creature was on them before they realized it, darkness its terrifying benefactor. Sharp teeth nipped perilously at Reece’s arm before the heavy weight there was pulled away. Reece turned, eyes straining in the darkness, trying to pinpoint where the sounds of struggling were coming from. Opting to move rather than stand there like an idiot while his partner needed help, Reece collided with something and was shoved away almost immediately on impact, knife knocked out of his hand as he fell painfully against a rock, his arm bearing the brunt of the impact.

Grimacing, Reece shakily rose, hitting and tearing frantically when he felt claws slicing into injured and uninjured arm alike. An inhuman, high-pitched screech assaulted his ears.

Warm liquid was running down his arms, startling Reece enough that he feared how long he could keep this up until an entirely different set of hands grabbed hold of him, not slashing at him and drawing blood just… warm palms pressing him forward.

_That’s right… Wax is here. _

Wax dragged him into the smallest,  _tightest_ space imaginable, maneuvering Reece this way and that for an incredibly long amount of time and it was almost too much for Reece to take, not enough air to breathe... 

Out of pure instinct and nothing short of sheer panic, he frantically tried to flee only for his head to smack into what felt like a rock, causing Wax’s hands on him -  _again _ \- to have no resistance whatsoever. The good news was that the throbbing in his head and arms distracted him from nearly everything else. 

_Especially _ good news given the relentless scraping noises behind them, accompanied by loud snarling and excited breathing that  _definitely _ didn’t belong to any human. 

Reece pressed closer to Wax despite his brain screaming for oxygen, his limbs throbbing with newfound pain and a desperate need for space. His eyes burned from ash and dust and a lack of sunlight and a days old need for  _rest. _

He found Wax’s chest, shoving as much material as possible in his mouth to prevent himself from coughing, given he couldn’t move either of his arms due to pain or numbness; he half-feared to anyway with the liquid he could feel dripping down them. Wax didn’t mind, didn’t tense anymore than he already had been and didn’t grumble and didn’t push him even an inch back. They stood there uncomfortably, trapped in a crevice barely big enough for the two of them, hardly daring to breathe and barely on their feet as the adrenaline slowly started to fade.

They were latched together physically and emotionally in their terror.

Reece was grateful that for once he could share it with someone, that for  _once _ it wasn’t visions but reality, which meant Wax had seen every bit of it that Reece had and was still living it, fearing it,  _breathing _ it all in like a poison. The bodies, the tunnels, the darkness taunting them, playing on their entirely human vulnerabilities. 

And then, wretched and shameful, Reece prayed that Wax would be spared from it. Selfishness was easy when it meant detaching oneself from pain, or even sharing it, but it never lasted long in Reece’s experience.

Even when it was over, when the harsh, rattling breathing was long gone; when the silence was deafening enough that Reece was convinced he had gone deaf; when it was obvious that they could now move, Wax still held him close in a way that superseded all available words. Reece kept still despite every limb screaming at him to move, panting and half-delirious with the effort not to.

After about an eternity, Reece felt something palpitating his arm. Out of curiosity he pulled back several inches, as much as he could manage, and peered over to where Wax’s fingers were only to find his arm at an almost grotesque and definitely unnatural angle. Grateful they were still plunged in darkness and he couldn’t see the exact amount of damage or even blood there, he turned away, face smacking into Wax’s shoulder and resting there, smothered in heat, letting Wax poke and prod him all he wanted as he trembled and waited, sick to his stomach and sick in his heart and every part of him sick with pain and longing for the sun to caress his face, for clean air to breathe, for Wax’s broad and experienced hands to provide him with comfort and not cause him pain.

He bit back a sharp cry as Wax moved his arm as delicately as possible, buried himself against his chest again, material wet with his own saliva jammed past his lips and blocking out all sound, and he tried to breathe past the agony and the fear and the dust clogging up his lungs.

Wax nudged him once he was done, holding up two fingers to warn Reece not to move back further than two steps. Reece obeyed, the two of them twisting and turning this way and that for the next ten minutes or so - occasionally pausing, ears straining - before they were  _finally_ freed. 

Reece sunk back against the nearest wall for a long moment and then, keeping his mangled arm as still as possible, his other hand brushed aside the dirt obscuring that wall’s markings. Trying to recognize  _something _ familiar, or maybe just trying wholeheartedly to ignore his pain, he pushed aside his doubts and allowed instinct to guide him. 

Wax followed him without questioning him once, never far from Reece’s back until they were plunged once more into warm sunlight and then…  _then _ there were hands cupping his sides and pushing him down an adjacent vacant alley and gripping him tighter every time he stumbled. 

He fell down hard, landing awkwardly and painfully and Wax sheltered him, undressing between weary blinks and at least not slapping Reece into further wakefulness.

Reece opened his eyes and Wax’s chest was bare save for his trademark dust-ridden jacket obscuring some of it; he was busy tearing his shirt into thin strips, binding them tightly against Reece’s arm. Not for the first time after a near-death experience did Reece wish for a jolt of caffeine - preferably coffee - and a warm bed instead of nausea and pain gnawing at his bones.

“I know another way we’ll try,” Wax told him, already pulling him up onto his feet and holding him until he stopped swaying. That was when Reece realized that there would be no hospitals or painkillers or hotels, there couldn’t be.

That was when Reece remembered that they couldn’t resurface, not truly, and he wondered if they’d ever be able to again.

* * *

Nearly forty paces from the next hidden entrance Wax had found for them, Reece more than eager for this hunt to be over even though he needed rest just as badly, it  _again _ caught them unawares. Scrabbling for his knife, Reece rushed at the creature but not before it laid hold of Wax. Reece suspected his partner made some sort of blow, a screech of pain nearly causing him to cover his ears, but it clearly wasn’t enough as the creature sent Wax flying across the dark, cavernous interior of the catacombs. 

Shocked and disoriented, Reece tumbled back against the nearest wall, which crumbled against his back and pummeled parts of his head where he couldn’t shield well-enough with his only free arm. Now incredibly dizzy and agitated, he frantically searched for his partner in the darkness.

He could hear the breathing again, taunting him, echoing like a jackhammer in his head. He could just make out the remnants of devoured humans as much as he wanted to turn away, limbs and fingers and torn off bits of skin, crammed between the cracks of walls and strewn about carelessly over patches of floor, every second that went by a reminder of his and Wax’s fate closing in on them. Coughing and blinking furiously and trying to steel himself for what came next, he crawled over to where his partner lay, who was taking in everything Reece had just wasted precious seconds on.

About to stand and help him to his feet, Wax was instead  _viciously_ dragged away from him. 

Reece pushed himself up onto his knees with more hope than actual balance and shoved himself forward with an arm that was more hindrance than help. Miraculously, he managed to fall on top of Wax, successfully knocking the creature away from his partner. Barely making it to his feet, they grappled in the blinding darkness, Reece gritting his teeth against the further hits his body was forced to endure, as his only available hand made blows of its own, going for any part he could feel, searching frantically for a head, for  _eyes _ he could put out just as surely as Reece’s eyes were put out in this  _tomb. _

And then with no warning, the creature tore away from him and without a doubt, Reece knew it was going for the easier kill. Desperate, he stumbled forward where he remembered Wax had lain and swung wildly, madly, without thought or intelligence or even impact.

When he  _did_ make impact, he didn’t hesitate. His fingernails dug into dry, wrinkled skin, pushing in and tearing like his very life depended on it, like Wax’s life depended on it, which it did. He didn’t care how much damage he was causing, he couldn’t see well enough anyway, only caring that he was doing  _something_ . 

He pushed up, felt something soft and squishy, felt hands beating at him and yet was so distanced from the pain that he was able to sink right in. The screeching tore at his eardrums, making pain a brutal and unforgiving reality again, but Reece didn’t stop, grasping and tearing and squeezing and trying to remember to breathe in between it all.

And then the creature fled so fast Reece almost fell over.

Somehow, Reece knew it was taking Wax with it. Somehow, in the exact same moment, he honed in on the patch of darkness straight ahead that was so absolute he knew  _exactly _ what it was. 

Mouth open in a silent scream, he lunged for his partner just before he followed the creature into the abyss below them, just barely grabbing him before he disappeared over the cliff’s edge. Unfortunately, Wax’s weight dragged the both of them further under, closer to that edge until Reece was all but over it.

There was no time to brace for a pain that would surely tear him asunder.

Wrenching his injured arm away from his chest, haphazard bandages falling away beneath him as he only barely swallowed a scream of agony, Reece strained desperately for the only bit of rock he could reach and dug in with every molecule of strength that still remained, his other hand still latched tightly around his partner’s wrist.

Now came the hard part.

Severely injured arm nearly past the point of function, Reece cried out as his hand dug in harder. He tried and failed to force himself back up onto the ledge, Wax’s weight keeping him near paralyzed. He nearly blacked out on three separate occasions, though he supposed it was from sheer will alone that he persisted and succeeded in remaining conscious. After the third time, eyes rolling back in his head as his limbs began to seize from the incredible strain they were forced to endure, Reece brought himself back enough to push himself up every inch he could, swinging Wax to the left no more than five or six inches to the next closest ledge.

Reece could do no more; he could only hang on until his body decided enough was enough.

He waited immeasurable seconds for his partner to hoist himself up, though when he finally did Reece startled enough to almost let go to plummet to his death. Wax acted quickly, however, demanding Reece’s now vacant hand which had very nearly been struck dead from Wax’s own weight.

“Reece!”

The panic in his partner’s voice spurred him to action like nothing else could. With one choking breath, Reece swung his arm up toward Wax as his vision started to blacken again. He knew it wasn’t nearly high enough but Wax reached regardless, almost as if he was as aware of Reece’s limits as Reece himself was. Reece could hear him curse in frustration as his bloodied arm repeatedly slipped out of his hold.

“Hold on, Reece, okay? Please!”

And all the while, Reece dangling like a fish on a hook, Wax trying and failing to hold onto him, Reece was still  _somehow _ holding onto that ledge. Realizing that sooner rather than later he would fall, who knew how many feet and for how many seconds, Reece tried to form any sort of meaningful sentence, or at least intelligible words, not that Wax was paying attention, not that Wax wouldn’t stubbornly shut him down immediately. 

“Goddammit!” Wax pleaded.

Funny, how he had  _just _ been able to hold onto Wax for long enough to save him, but how Wax couldn’t hold onto him for two seconds before he was gone again. 

Was the universe trying to tell them something?

And  _god, _ he was getting  _tired. _

Reece’s grip softened around the rock and Wax shoved himself forward until he was nearly off the ledge again… and all Reece’s efforts would have been _wasted. _Wax got a strong enough hold on him and tightened his grip until Reece was _certain_ he was trying to make him black out once and for all. Despite how dangerously numb Reece felt, Wax _still _pressured him not to let go. “Easy. Hold on a sec. I got ya.”

And for five seconds more, just in case Wax’s grip faltered again, Reece held on.

He waited for Wax to pull him up out of harm’s way, waited until he could lie face down on cold dirt which burned through his cheek before he shifted, turning onto his side and trying to determine just how close to death he was.

“Hey, Reece…?” Wax could have been miles away for all Reece could reach out to him.

“Can I pass out now?” Reece whimpered between desperate pants, held a cruel victim of scalding, unceasing pain. He screwed his eyes shut and dug his back into the rock wall behind him, eager to feel pain somewhere, _anywhere _other than his arm. It may have made no sense to anyone else in that moment, Reece appearing hell-bent on scraping up his back into ribbons of blood and flesh, but he also figured that it was perfectly logical for pain to drive a person absolutely _insane _with the desperation to shift that pain anywhere else, to increase the overall agony _so much_ that he was forced out of his own skin, even if that meant into unconsciousness. 

_Especially _ if that meant into unconsciousness. 

Wax, unfortunately, pulled him away from further harm, murmuring a useless litany of ‘easy, easy.’ There was nothing easy about the pain, nothing easy about accepting how close the two of them had been to dying. There was nothing easy about having his arm mangled repeatedly, bruised and battered and crushed and dislocated and finally nearly torn right off.

There was nothing easy about their lives, about Reece’s visions, about any of it.

Wax purposefully  _didn’t _ touch Reece’s arm for a good twenty seconds or so. Dark thoughts swirled around Reece’s head then, of senseless fever and deepening infection and a persistent need for amputation and he wondered how likely it was that he was dreaming right at this very moment. He felt as if he were being stretched in two directions, frigid cold and searing hellfire nipping at his skin and cutting inside and burrowing tightly against his vital organs, staking their claim wherever they could get it.

Chaos rippled beneath his limbs and they locked, holding Reece in breathless suspension. He could feel his arms and legs being stretched, hands and feet, every toe and every finger. He could feel his every muscle pulled taut, aching,  _burning_ , a punishment for having been pushed well past the limits of endurance. 

Reece could feel himself start to seize, that’s what it  _felt _ like anyway, could feel every limb protesting vehemently until he could do nothing more than just lay there and surrender to the convulsions, trapped inside the cage his own body had become, paralyzed, gasping horribly, choking on air clogged with dirt and death and denial. 

If he had gone through all this just to die like  _this…_

And then, mercifully, it stopped. Someone cut the strings. Reece collapsed, boneless and sightless, back against the ground. Wax shifted closer and rolled Reece tightly into his side. “Jesus Christ, Reece.” Wax seemed to manage to ball up all his anxiety and pride and disbelief into those three little breathless words.

Reece thought they summed it all up pretty much perfectly.

* * *

Sometimes in fever dreams, Reece would feel himself grinning, blood dripping, spurted out between words and between fingers, his hands clawing, scratching skin into pretty little ribbons of flesh, maiming, laughing, having just snapped someone’s unfortunate neck. He could feel the grind of bones under his hands, the telltale pop of misalignment, the mercy of water against his skin washing away blood and consequence alike, hiding all traces of him despite his morality following, ever following at his heels like a persistent, ill-intentioned shadow.

He avoided mirrors and windows: a reflection that would remind him that he was no original, only a carbon copy.

Only one could win, in the end; he had denied this for so long but only  _one _ could survive. Maybe that was why he had revealed himself, no holds barred, ego bared and teeth clenched in victory, repeating a mantra of  _join me, join me, shed your partner and I can show you the world. _

_Kill your partner and we’ll kill the world. _

He would wake with Wax’s name nearly past his lips, having escaped through the searing burn of his throat and the chaos in his head, each second stripping him of memory and reason. After an age, he woke underneath Wax’s hands and  _knew_ , knew that even if he couldn’t recognize himself that Wax could, Wax  _knew_ . It was why he was still here, still trying, still pushing. 

And believing in Wax, Reece breathed in fresh, cold air for the first time in a  _long_ time.

* * *

Crudely bandaged -  _again _ \- arm held tightly against his chest, lighting him up in fever fire, Reece stumbled half-coherently after Wax. He was used to the dust clogging up his hair drifting down occasionally into his eyes, used to following Wax by sound rather than sight, used to picking at scraps of food enough to coat the worst areas of his stomach and drinking until he was just a bit closer to sufficient hydration than its alternative. 

How much more they would have to _endure_ before they were back in the agency’s good graces, Reece spent most of his unlimited time trying not to think about. 

Then again, it was better than dwelling on the hurt pushing in on him from every possible angle.

“Are we ever gonna make it out of this, Wax?”

Wax’s feet scraped just off to his left and behind, alerting Reece that he’d taken a wrong turn. He doubled back, hand resting over his bandaged arm, tap tap tapping a painful beat just to reassure himself that he could still feel, just for every moment a cold numbness stole his breath away.

His partner took care to bump into his shoulder, though it still sent lightning bolts stabbing through his useless limb. Wax was filthy, though Reece doubted he fared much better. Through all that grime though, an accumulation of dirt and dust and blood, a light in his eyes shone out brighter even than the sun. “You mean do I think it’s the end of the line? Hell no. We’re still together, aren’t we? That’s gotta count for something.”

This took Reece aback for a few moments because during all of this, somehow he hadn’t realized the magnitude of the certainty that he  _wasn’t _ alone. Even before Wax’s face had accompanied his own into the world at large, plastered over every paper and TV screen, he had still remained with Reece as if their partnership was absolute, the be all and end all and no doubt about it. 

Somehow, for the first time in nearly two months, Reece found it deep inside himself to smile, nothing grand or special or memorable, just a smile enough.

* * *

_~Unveil now, lift away_

_I see you runnin’_

_Deceiver, chased away_

_A long time comin’~_

* * *

**FIN**

**Author's Note:**

> **Endnote:** I plan to continue this. I’ve created this whole underground world for this series that I really want to elaborate more on; hopefully it’s not too out there for this fic. The Paris catacombs are definitely something that both terrify and fascinate me. If you’ve gotten to the end of this, thanks for sticking it out with me on this ride.


End file.
